The Nigerian working group of a campaign led by the Organization of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA) is collaborating on a regional campaign demanding more investment by governments in the health of their citizens. OTUWA represents trade union national centers in the 15 West African countries comprising the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Addressing journalists at a public event in Abuja, Nigeria working group coordinator Dr. Ayegba Ojonugwa, last month warned that governments must increase health workers’ wages and improve their working conditions—including safety—to staunch the outflux of health workers from the beleaguered sector.
“We are here today to further advocate that healthcare is a human right,” said Ojonugwa, who noted that West Africa’s governments are not implementing the 15 percent minimum annual budgetary health allocation to which African heads of state agreed in the landmark 2001 Abuja Declaration. Currently, no country in the region achieves this percentage and Nigeria’s healthcare indicators are some of the worst in Africa—in part because medical professionals are in such short supply there.
In Nigeria, OTUWA’s “Healthcare Is a Human Right” campaign—launched in Abuja in March 2021—is supported by the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) and labor federations Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC).
In the region, the campaign is supported by OTUWA’s affiliates together with many of their health sector unions. A 2020 survey of 700 health workers living in Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo provides a window into the region’s health-sector shortcomings and presents a raft of recommendations for ensuring the protection of health worker rights and effective, accessible healthcare for all.
From Bangladesh to Kyrgyzstan, Mexico and Sri Lanka, hundreds of thousands of workers and their families celebrated International Workers Day May 1, honoring the dignity of work and the accomplishments of the union movement in defending human rights, job stability, fair wages and safe workplaces. For workers in Philippines, the event took on special importance, as they mourned and protested the recent stabbing and murder of Alex Dolorosa, a BIEN paralegal and officer organizing BPO workers in Bacolod, vowing to continue his work.
Click here for our photo essay of May Day 2023 events by Solidarity Center allies around the globe.
Kyrgyzstan, May Day 2023. Credit: Aizhan Ruslanbekova/Solidarity Center
Sri Lanka, May Day 2023. Credit: Prasdhini Niroshika/Solidarity Center
Philippines, May Day 2023. Credit: Andreanna Garcia/Solidarity Center
Migrant domestic workers join with their Jordanian union brothers and sisters to celebrate May Day and campaign together for equal rights and wage protections for workers regardless of citizenship status. Credit: Sara Khatib/Solidarity Center
Kyrgyzstan, May Day 2023. Credit: Aizhan Ruslanbekova/Solidarity Center
Mexico, May Day 2023. Credit: Luis Iván Stephen
Philippines, May Day 2023. Credit: Andreanna Garcia/Solidarity Center
Following a 136-day strike, Montenegro’s telecom workers are celebrating a collective agreement that reverses a 14-year wage freeze and interrupts more than a decade of alleged union-busting tactics by Crnogorski Telekom (CT), majority owned by Deutsche Telecom since 2005.
The agreement won by the Trade Union of Telecom of Montenegro (STCG) immediately increases workers’ wages by 15 percent and provides an additional 5 percent total wage increase through 2025. Workers also negotiated improved benefits, job cut limits and, for the first time, severance pay.
“The company could not claim any more that the wage increase was inadmissible, given that every year it distributed dividends to shareholders and paid bonuses to already highly paid managers,” says Burić. “Since 2008, their profit has exceeded half a billion euros,” he says.
CT last gave workers a pay raise in 2008, even though consumer prices in Montenegro increased more than 45 percent from 2006 through 2021, and workers have been carrying an increased workload. The company slashed jobs by almost two-thirds since Deutsche Telecom took majority ownership, says STCG.
During its ongoing wage battle with the union, CT violated the country’s labor law by threatening to abolish the union’s collective agreement and refusing to negotiate with workers’ democratically elected leaders, say unions.
The agreement was won in spite of CT’s effort to violate numerous fundamental labor rights in the most egregious way,” says STCG President Željko Burić.
Solidarity support for STCG’s campaign was provided in Montenegro by the Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (UFTUM) and its affiliates. Other union and worker rights organizations supporting the campaign included the Albanian Telecommunications Union SPPTSH, Alliance One Telekom Union (OTU), the Croatian Telecommunications Union HST, the cooperation project of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) under the European Commission with regional network Solidarnost, the Transport and Telecommunications Union of Serbia GS SITEL Nezavisnost, Germany’s Ver.di, ETUC, the Solidarity Center, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and UNI Global Union. STCG is an ITUC member and founding UFTUM member.
For the second time this year a leader of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) was arrested, this time for suspicion of insulting a public official at a protest outside the country’s Ministry of Culture building. The arrest of the UGTT’s secretary for culture, Abdel Nasser Ben Amara last month—who has since been acquitted in court—is having a chilling effect on union work in the country and their efforts to represent workers’ interests, say unions.
The UGTT with civil society organizations last year convened a national initiative for the restoration of democracy after more than 90 percent of the country’s voters stayed away from Tunisia’s widely criticized December 2022 parliamentary elections. Workers last month took part in a series of rallies across the country to protest the government’s increased aggression against the union and its members, including arrest of general secretary of the highway workers’ union, Anis Kaabi. On Saturday more than 3,000 people joined a UGTT-organized rally calling for the government to accept “dialogue.”
Anis Kaabi’s January arrest after leading a strike by toll booth workers was denounced by a coalition of 66 human rights groups and Tunisian political parties as a “desperate attempt to criminalize union work.” European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) General Secretary Esther Lynch was ordered in February to leave the country after having addressed UGTT rally goers and called on Tunisia’s government to negotiate with workers to stabilize the economy.
Union members who legally exercise their rights in Tunisia, such as the freedom to strike, have been increasingly targeted, according to data from the UGTT, which found that the percentage of cases filed against union members rose in 2022, with a quarter of them directed against women. The government through February had filed more than 60 cases against union members for exercising their internationally recognized labor rights, according to UGTT, which says the numbers indicate a stepped-up effort to diminish the union’s power and turn public opinion against it.
The UGTT, which represents more than 1 million members, in 2015 shared a Nobel Peace Prize with three other civil society groups for promoting national dialogue in Tunisia.
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